Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday announced that up to 125 units of electricity would be provided free of charge to domestic consumers in the State. He shared the announcement in a post on ‘X’ early this morning, ahead of the State assembly elections.
The post added, “We have been providing electricity to everyone at affordable rates from the very beginning. Now we have decided that from August 1, 2025, that is, from the July bill itself, all domestic consumers in the State will not have to pay any money for electricity up to 125 units. This will benefit a total of 1.67 crore families in the State.”
He further added, “We have also decided that in the next three years, with the consent of all these domestic consumers, solar power plants will be installed on their rooftops or at nearby public places to provide benefits. Under the Kutir Jyoti scheme, for extremely poor families, the State government will bear the entire cost of installing solar power plants, and for the rest, the government will provide appropriate support.
In the post, explaining the benefits, the CM continued, “This means that domestic consumers will no longer have to bear any cost for electricity up to 125 units, and at the same time, it is estimated that within the next three years, up to 10,000 megawatts of solar energy will be available in the State.”
Kumar has so far made several big announcements in the poll-bound Bihar. On July 13, 2025, he vowed to deliver jobs and employment opportunities to the youth amounting one crore in the next five years (2025-2030). Three days later, on July 16, he asked the Education Department to inaugurate the fourth instalment of the Teacher Recruitment Exam (TRE), under which more than one lakh teachers are to be recruited.
Last month, he also increased the pension to ₹1100 per month instead of ₹400 under the Social Security Scheme for the old age, differently-abled and widows in the state.
In November 2024, however, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav had promised to give 200 units of free electricity to consumers if voted in power in the 2025 assembly election.
Mocking Bihar CM, RJD spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav said that Kumar was required to make these big announcements, fearing the rise of the opposition leader who had promised to give 200 free units before him.
“If there is an opposition leader like Tejashwi Yadav, the government will have to bow down. It was the promise of Tejashwi ji, and now Nitish Kumar has announced it. The way our leader had promised to increase the pension scheme from ₹400 to ₹1,500, Nitish Ji has increased it. In the similar way, this government will also implement Tejashwi’s ji promise to give ₹2500 monthly financial assistance to women under the Mai-Bahin Samman Yojna,” Mr. Shakti Singh said.
Amid these political jibes, Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, who is also the Finance Minister of the State, will be sharing more details regarding the expenditure of the state government for free electricity later in the day.
